Make a beautiful gingerbread house using materials from around the house and some basic craft supplies. Follow the tutorial steps below to guide you. When you've done please send us a photo of your finished creation. We'll have a nice prize for one lucky crafter! You can upload a photo using this form.
You will need the following supplies:
Carefully remove the spout from the top of the carton with a craft knife, please ask an adult to help
with this part.
Open the top of the carton and cut along the two fold lines, I've marked them in black pen.
Fold the top of the carton to form a roof and tape it closed.
Using a paintbrush spread some P.V.A. glue onto the 4 sides of the carton. Stick a sheet of kitchen roll onto it and let it dry for a couple of hours. The reason that we do this is to provide an absorbent surface to paint on. If you don't want to do this you can just give the carton 2 or 3 coats of paint to get a nice even gingerbread colour.
When your kitchen roll and P.V.A. glue has fully dried paint the carton with brown paint.
Cut a roof from a piece of cardboard, a cereal box works well for this. Cut a piece about 1 cm longer and 1 cm wider than the top of the carton, fold it in half and stick it on top using the glue gun.
Cut out circles, squares or any shape that you like from the yellow card and stick them onto the carton to make windows.
Use the white acrylic marker pen to decorate the house and stick on some coloured buttons using the glue gun......you can decorate the house anyway that you like, you could add sequins or even candy canes.
To make the snow for the roof mix
This quantity makes enough snow for lots of houses.
Use a lolly stick to spread the mixture onto the roof of the house, spread it on thickly to make it look like snow, while the snow is still wet gently press the buttons into it, as it dries it will act like a glue and keep the buttons in place.
If you don't want to use the snow mix just use cotton wool instead and stick some buttons on with glue.
Now that you know how to make one house you can use lots of different boxes and containers to create your own gingerbread village.
Send us some pictures of your creations. You can upload them here and there might even be a prize for someone lucky...
© Meath County Council